


the sea sings them back to you

by sumaru



Series: oikage week [3]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: A Really Alarming Amount Of Teeth, Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Blood, Drowning, M/M, Mermaids, Oikage Week, Teeth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-21
Updated: 2018-04-21
Packaged: 2019-04-25 17:25:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14383455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sumaru/pseuds/sumaru
Summary: Kageyama nearly drowns in the summer of his twelfth year. But something throws him back up onto the sandbank, and then that something throws up a sea-smooth bottle after him, too. It hits the sand with a little plink.Get out of my ocean, the message inside the bottle reads.Please show me how you did that, Kageyama writes back.Oikawa is a mermaid, Kageyama has only ever had eyes for the vast impossible blue of the ocean, and drowning is probably just like kissing, maybe.





	the sea sings them back to you

**Author's Note:**

> SOMEONE NEEDS TO STOP ME FROM BEING THIS HORNY ON MAIN AT ALL TIMES.
> 
> Written for Day 4: (Prompt: Pen Pal) of OiKage Week.

 

 

 

Kageyama nearly drowns in the summer of his twelfth year. But something throws him back up onto the sandbank, and then that something throws up a sea-smooth bottle after him, too. It hits the sand with a little plink.

 _Get out of my ocean,_ the message inside the bottle reads.

 _Please show me how you did that,_ Kageyama writes back. His young heart is thundering in his chest strong and fast enough to crush him. The sea was much more interesting than he thought possible.

He doesn’t get a reply. But two days later, Kageyama stumbles across a large, deep sea tuna gutted raw on the rocky outcrop where he usually goes looking for shells washed up to shore. It stares at him, out of season, glassy-eyed and contemptuous.

 

 

*

 

 

Kageyama nearly drowns again in the summer of his fifteenth year. He’s practicing for his diving certification when he gets smashed into the pier by a wave that comes in suddenly, the undertow pulling him out past the familiar coastline. But he’s always been a strong swimmer, his heart full of the vast, impossible blue of the ocean since that day so long ago, and he’s not even scared at all.

“You _should_ be scared, you little brat,” someone hisses.

Kageyama is too sea-dazed to see much more than the black heaving waves that threaten to pull him completely under. Blood pounds hot and panicked in his limbs when something thick and strong loops around his waist, yanking him to a rocky outcrop that curves out from the shore, and he’s hoisted up and thrown back on land before he can even kick out. The smooth arc of the throw strikes familiarity so deep and sudden and cutting, he blacks out for one long, panicked heartbeat, all those years ago pulled into him at once in a flood of seawater. His flailing hands brush against fish scales that freeze his fingertips to ice, and Kageyama thinks this must be what it feels like at the bottom of the sea — a pressure that squeezes the air from your lungs until all you can feel is that deep blue rushing in. It’s amazing. He wants to see it someday. He means to.

But under the golden, unrelenting summer sun, as Kageyama heaves up bile and seawater from in between his trembling hands, all he sees through the salt stinging his eyes is the bright silver flash of a fish tail, and the dismissive wave of a pale, clawed hand as it disappears back under the waves.

 _Thank you for showing me,_ Kageyama writes on a slip of paper later that night. _Please show me more. I want to know._ His pencil presses deep and deliberate as he writes, as if he could convey all the weight of his want into just those simple words. He doesn’t have anything of value to give in return, just a small packet of milk bread he’s been saving for after dinner, so he squishes it determinedly into the glass bottle before he caps it and throws it out to sea.

 _This just makes us one for one_ , Kageyama finds a week later in a sea-green bottle washed up against the rocks where he almost drowned. He knows the sea will have to show itself again one day so he comes looking when he can, searching for that one impossible thing. _And don’t think I won’t come to claim my one._

 

 

*

 

 

Kageyama feels like maybe he should’ve paid more attention in his first semester of biology. It's not like he expected Tooru to look anything like him in any real human way. In that very specific kind of deep personal honesty that has Kageyama’s hand wrapped loose and warm around himself in the early hours of the morning, ( _when he’s woken by the wind coming off the waves and his little room is filled with the smell of dead sea things and brine_ ), Kageyama had always thought of the way the water had rolled pure and sweet off the silver scales of Tooru’s tail, and he had thought maybe Tooru was like that too, sweet and crystal clear and seawater blue.

In some ways, he wasn’t wrong.

On a day that deep sea fish wash up dead with the tide, Kageyama finds Tooru in the shallow pools near the rocky outcrop. He had long since learned that there’s always been summer stories of swimmers drowning here, bones smashed against the rock. Or of sailors lured to their deaths, in stories that were much older than that. And indeed, if you walked the narrow sandy path that winds its way precariously through the juts of grey rock that frame the sky, you could almost feel something like the deep pressure of the sea filling your lungs. You could almost feel your ears pop with it.

Tooru doesn’t sing so much as he brings the sea right up to the shore with him, and like the sea, when you see lights playing over the deep water, you need to heed the storm warnings.

“Oh, what’s _this_ ,” Tooru smiles thinly, voice like the waves pulling back smooth and slow from the sand, baring the bleached bone of white teeth. He’s sitting half in the water, half propped up against the bank. Kageyama can track the slow flicker of his tail right under the water’s surface; a mirror held up to a mirror. “Looks like it’s the little brat again. Did you lose your way another time? Did you want Tooru-san to hold your hand to find your way home?”

“I don’t want you to hold my hand,” Kageyama snaps back, bristling, but there’s not much bite to it. He straightens up, mouth flattening into a glower as he takes a deep breath and bows so low he can see the crystal grains of sand encrusted in the rock. “My name is Kageyama Tobio and I’m studying marine science.”

It’s late afternoon, but the sun doesn’t seem to reach this hidden place. Everything is murky, the air tastes deep green and full of salt, and it makes Kageyama’s mouth water as he straightens up and stares right at the pale blue light that lines Tooru’s long tongue, the way it dips inside and out of his mouth each time Tooru speaks. Kageyama never did pay much attention to the warning clouds on the horizon. His focus was always turned to the deep water where he’s always wanted to be.

Tooru’s gills ripple a little at the way Kageyama’s brow dips into a frown; he’s laughing in his throat. “What did you hope to find here?”

Kageyama looks at the gleaming scales of Tooru’s tail, the white hands that taper into claws, the two front rows of blunt white teeth that frame the light in his mouth, _always moving, always deeper_ , and Kageyama doesn’t notice when his ears pop from the deep sea pressure of the air, doesn’t notice he’s reaching for that dangling light before Tooru laughs at him, a pretty laugh, a soft, low, deep sea laugh, and Kageyama thinks he should have maybe believed in the stories just a little bit.

“Are you here to catch me? Are you here to make a wish?” Tooru sing-songs cheerfully as Kageyama stumbles awkwardly in the shallows, trying not to step on Tooru’s tail. “Is today the day I get my _one_?”

“I want to,” Kageyama swallows thickly, heat rising in his cheeks, fingers curling in on themselves. He doesn’t believe in magic. He wants to know. His jeans are drenched and he’s shaking as the cold water eats the warmth right out of his bones and he doesn’t care. “I want to touch.” His spine is so stiff he feels like he’s going to snap under the weight of the entire sea hanging here. “Please, Tooru-san.”

Tooru just smiles wide with all of his teeth, the front teeth, and the back teeth, and the little clusters of teeth in between. “How very _adult_ of you, Tobio-chan. Maybe I was wrong about you afterall. Or maybe you’re that stupid and don’t know what you’re asking for.” The thick coils of Tooru’s tail move like quicksilver.

“I’m not st—”

Tooru’s claws are tearing at his skin, Tooru’s teeth are tearing at his mouth, and Kageyama can only swallow the salt and seawater off of Tooru’s tongue as the water closes over them, and _I’m going to die_ is the only thing that feels even a little like a wish as Kageyama tries to grab at anything that feels like land, like air, like the world he just stepped out of.

Tooru bites into his mouth instead, blood filling the water between them as his blunt white teeth find purchase in Kageyama’s tongue, and everything is salt, and copper, filling his nose as Kageyama tries frantically to struggle against Tooru’s arms wrapped around him like he’s going to take Kageyama home. _I’m going to die_ races through his mind again, but it’s now at the back of his thoughts, lightheaded, pulsing with the lack of air, scattering over him like sunlight reflecting off the water, and Kageyama knows he’s so close to the surface, so close, but he also feels so close to the bottom of the sea, too, and maybe—

Kageyama’s legs kick at nothing, the water like the entire weight of his want desperately closing in on him, black and deep green and a burning as white as fish bones bleached in the sun. His lips are numb with cold but the inside of Tooru’s mouth is warm, Kageyama’s tongue pushing against rows and rows of crested teeth and he wants to taste each one of them, wants to watch them bite into his skin so he knows this is real, not magic, not seawater that leaves nothing but salt in the sun. The light of Tooru’s tongue tingles, just like Kageyama thought it would, beautiful and electric and Kageyama’s hands falter as his heart stutters under the water.

 _You’re so warm._ Something like delighted laughter bubbles right in his ear. _How cute_.

Kageyama’s eyes are squeezed shut against the salt water but the feel of Tooru’s tail wrapped around his legs makes him think of the mirror surface he saw, the inverted mirror, the mirror he’s looking at from the wrong side but keeps trying to cross.

The tail moves, that long tail that’s impossibly real, and Kageyama is breathing air again. Rock cuts into his palms as Tooru roughly pushes him partway up the embankment. He has just enough time to turn to the side as he chokes up long strings of blood and seawater, the brine stinging his bleeding mouth. He's shivering, he’s so cold he can’t feel the inside of his thighs, and he's hard despite everything and already missing the salt of the deep sea.

“I take that back,” Tooru says, scrunching up his nose as he splashes his tail a little beside Kageyama to wash away the mess. “That was absolutely not cute at all.”

“That was my first time.” Kageyama’s voice is rough. Something of the sea still rattles inside his throat. He knows he should pull himself completely out of the water but it’s not enough, it’s never been enough. “Was it your first time, too, Tooru-san.”

“Still not getting any cuter!”

“Can you,” Kageyama stares straight at Tooru. “Can you show me more?”

Tooru just smiles sweetly then and it’s almost like none of his teeth show at all.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Have you ever cheated on a prompt so wildly you laugh yourself crying.
> 
> Oikawa has features based on angler fish but the teeth of a sheepshead fish. Absolutely _do not_ look up the teeth of a sheepshead fish if clusters and teeth fuck up your day.
> 
> If this sounds like something I've written before, you're probably not wrong lmao rip.


End file.
